Mark Mycyk, BIRT Program Lead at AOHC, demonstrates some of the ways that the data analysis tool allows centres to drill down and better understand the people they serve, and the programs and services they need. Photo credit: Oleksandra Budna/AOHC
The Business Intelligence Reporting Tool (BIRT) -- developed by Community Health Centres and the Association of Ontario Health Centres to help inform quality improvement while measuring impacts of programs and services on people AOHC members serve -- has been internationally recognized by Healthcare Informatics, a leading publication in the Health IT sector based in the United States.
BIRT was shortlisted as a semifinalist for the Healthcare Informatics Innovator Awards Program and was the only Primary Care sector submission. BIRT was competing primarily against hospitals and health systems for the honour. In an article announcing the placement among top innovators in the field of analyzing health data, Healthcare Informatics said BIRT “gives member centres a holistic view of operations by consolidating key data and presenting it in an integrated and easy-to-analyze manner.”
“The vision was to produce a high-quality electronic dashboard that you could use to monitor in near real-time what any Community Health Centre was doing across the province,” Rodney Burns, CIO of AOHC, says in the article. Noting the importance of a strong data quality framework and high participation rates among AOHC members in the BIRT program, Burns says the level of analytics that the tool provides means that members can improve data quality, deliver better services, and measure outcomes and impacts more completely, and “in ways others cannot do.” In a nutshell, BIRT enables AOHC members to be at the forefront of quality improvement and health data analysis in Ontario, with a strong focus on the determinants of health and health equity initiatives.
Congratulations to the BIRT team, and to staff at the centre level. To read the full article outlining BIRT’s achievement, click here.